


Sounds of Home

by Framlingem



Series: Where No Woman fics [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Community: where_no_woman, Folklore, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Framlingem/pseuds/Framlingem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Practically from the moment she'd been able to talk she'd been taught how to listen."</p>
<p>Uhura's grandmother tells her a story about the art of listening for the important things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sounds of Home

  
This, _says Grandmother,_ is the talent of women. _The girl-child opens her mouth to ask a question, but shuts it at her grandmother's raised eyebrow, and subsides back to her cross-legged position on the floor. Grandmother, she thinks, is very beautiful, with her brightly-coloured necklace and earrings made of shells. Surely Grandmother never wiggles. The girl-child arranges the arch of her neck in imitation of Grandmother's tall carriage._ And this, _Grandmother continues_ , is the story of that talent.   
  
A long time ago, when there was no city, when all around here was grasslands and the baobab, Anansi went a-walking. Now, Mistress Anansi was angry with him for he had spilled the soup she had been making for his supper, and put the fire out with it, and Anansi, he'd been told to go away!   
  
Child, if you are about to ask why she didn't replicate more, remember, this was a long time ago. Longer ago than the Egyptian mummies, yes, longer ago than that.  
  
Anansi walked, and he walked, and Nyame the sky-god his father took pity on him and sent rain so that he was not thirsty, and sun so that he was not cold, but the loneliness crawled into Anansi's belly and blew it up tight like a drum. One day, he spied a little girl, just a bit older than you are now, under the tree where Monkey and his family were living. Aha! thought Anansi, I will take this little girl as a wife. Mistress Anansi does not love me anymore, and I will not tell her anyway.   
  
Anasi was clever and tricky. He knew that if he went up to her, she would run. So Anansi, he laid himself down in the grasslands, and he moaned! Oh, he moaned, it hurts! He carried on, saying Oh, I am surely dying! The little girl heard him, and her soft heart made her go to him. Mister Spider, she said, what is wrong?   
  
Oh, said Anansi, I am sick! I have been poisoned, and I need someone to take me to my home and look after me. And he ran up her arm to sit on her shoulder. The little girl, being kind, said that of course she would take him to his home and look after him. But remember, Anansi was tricky. He told her that his home was a secret, and that she would have to wear a cloth tied over her eyes so that she would not see the way, and that he would whisper to her where to go, and so when after days of walking they arrived at one of Anansi's huts, the child did not know where she was.  
  
She looked after Anansi, and Anasi did not spill the soup, and for a time they were happy. But the little girl was after all only a little girl, and she grew to miss her family, her mother and her father and her sisters. They were far away, and she did not know where, and she grew sad.   
  
She told Anansi, and he said that she would get lost if she left.  
  
So the little girl went out before the sunrise, and cried. Nyame saw her crying, and made wind for her. The wind from the North was strong, and carried with it sounds. The little girl listened, and in the wind she heard nothing. Nyame did this twice more, until in the wind from the East the little girl heard the yelling of Monkey and his family greeting the day, and so she set out, following the sound of the wind.  
  
When Anansi woke and found himself alone, he went home to Mistress Anansi, who made him soup for supper and forgave him. _  
  
The girl-child recrossed her legs and frowned, and asked what happened to the little girl._ Ah, _said Grandmother,_ she grew up, and had children, and taught them to listen. They did many great things, but that is a story for another time.  
  
***  
  
Nyota keeps a file on her personal PADD. It has the sounds of the street outside a little girl's window: the roar of cars, the trumpet of the jazz musician who plays on the street corner, the clinking of glasses from the bar that lies across the way, front windows non-existent, the babble of the neighbour's television, the wind in the skyscrapers at four in the morning when the rest is quiet.  
  
Later, she adds things: the sound of solar wind, the babble of humanity's voice broadcasts.  
  
Gaila finds it and looks puzzled, and asks what it is for.  
  
Nyota says, _So I never get lost._


End file.
